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It's a hit at the box office, so I guess we here at the Out & About Movie Review should go ahead and review Message in a Bottle. Hello again and welcome to another movie review here on Out & About, I will remain your movie dude, Mike Stevens. The movie is Message in a Bottle which stars Kevin Costner (Waterworld) as Garret Blake, a sailboat restorer living on North Carolina's Outer Banks, and co-starring Robin Wright (Forrest Gump) as a newspaper researcher looking for love. The story starts with Wright's character Theresa, finding a bottle while on vacation in New England. Inside the bottle is a love note that touches her heart and makes her want to find the man who wrote it. When she gets back to Chicago she tells all of her friends about the note, which promptly gets it published in her paper by her boss, a columnist. After publication she learns of two more notes, so then she starts to track down the author. Eventually she traces the notes to Costner's character Garret. Now Theresa flies down to North Carolina to find her man, but she's not too sure how to go about meeting him. The first person she really meets down there turns out to be Dodge Blake, Garret's Dad, who is played by Paul Newman (The Color of Money). Newman's character is a matter-of-fact, straight to the truth old timer who provides a lot of comedic relief. Anyway, Garret and Theresa meet and start to fall for each other, Theresa more so than Garret. Garret on the other hand is still in love with his wife who had died several years prior, and to whom he was writing to in the messages in the bottles. While Garret is getting to know Theresa, he must still deal with things from his past, such as the family of his departed wife, his dad, and how to move on. As this is going on, the relationship between the two continues to develop, and now it is Garret's turn to visit Theresa in Chicago. There he meets Theresa's son Jason, played by Jesse James. He also discovers the bottles and the article in the paper. Will this spell disaster for the budding relationship, or will irony destroy it? I'm not going to say. Message in a Bottle also stars John Savage as Johnny Land, Illeana Douglas, Robbie Coltrane, Bethel Leslie, and Tom Aldredge. The movie is directed by Luis Mandoki, adapted to the screen by Gerald Di Pego from a Nicholas Sparks novel, and produced by Costner. As to nudity, there was none, and as such the film is only rated PG-13. I loved Paul Newman in this film, and everyone else put in good performances. The story is touching and heart-wrenching all in one. All of the women will cry, as will a fair amount of us men. This is a good picture. As to the Out & About Rating, I give Message in a Bottle nine couches on the scale of ten. For the Out & About Movie Review, I am Mike Stevens signing off. Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:45:57 AM |